Chapter Thirty: Escape the Mad House

Back to the group from The Library

The blackness dissolves away and presents our new location to us. I cling to Father and Kaif cringes in fear. We wait for the quiet to kill itself.

“Kaif,” Zaru brings out his whisper methodically, “Where are we?”

The servant huddles away from us as he shivers from his anxiety. “I’m sorry,” he rasps shakily. “I’m so sorry, I never thought Lord Vensen would send us to this place if he found out about your escape.” He looks so scared.

I try speaking to him calmly, “Kaif…”

“He sent us to the Mad House.” His quivering slowly diminishes.

I pry at his answer to get more out of him, “The Mad House?”

A loud bang on a wall near us disturbs our soft conversation. Its echo turns into a creaking like someone is coming closer to us from the other side. We all search from the tube with our limited perspective to find the culprit of the unsettling noise. Nothing is exposing itself to us with the light from the moon, but we all sense that something is watching us. The sound of a crackling snarl sneaks its way into our range with a black thing examining us. The red eyes glaring at us individually for a meal with the matching pupils dart all over the crimson pools. Its teeth glimmer in the dim blue luminescence to show off their great size and sleek edges as they protrude from the drooling mouth. Claws from this horrifying lizard-thing slide down the glass of the cylinder and leave long marks as they act more like fingers with their flexible movements. As quickly as it came, the living shadow slips from our view like the reptile it represents and is seen no more.

The deadly silence of night comes back to accompany us with the hallway expanding left to right.

Father then steps close to where the tube is supposed to open and starts searching for a way to make the glass slide open.

“What are you doing?” My whisper barely carries over.

“We need to get out of here if we want to move forward.” Dad restrains his attention to escaping this thing. “No one has authority to hurt us here, so we should be fine,” he turns to stare at Zaru and comments, “except towards you.” Before I question his reasoning, he changes the subject back to our predicament, “Vila, come over here. I want to show you something.”

I obey as the others make room in the tight space that we’re in.

“Your mother taught me this little trick when we were betrothed. Kakashin and I like to call it the spec effect.” He directs my attention to one of his fingers. “You just focus your tsavi from the void into the very tip of a limb, like a finger, and concentrate on decimating what you want to destroy.” He then taps the glass with one of his phalanges and a black web forms through the interior of the window. Dad taps the glass some more in different spots to create a whole unfolding darkness that devours the translucent material away until there is nothing in front of us besides the corridor.

We each step out of the tube and absorb our surrounding.

“Alright then; now what?” Zaru keeps his voice on a low volume.

“We need to find the point of focus for this area.” Father walks around in the dimness with ease as he pursuits the very object he mentioned.

“And how do we find that,” Zaru inquires while acting like he’s also tracking it.

My father rolls his eyes around and swings his body side to side as he tries to muster up the words to illuminate the science behind the answer. “Let’s just say for now that the Stuki family has this-‘Sixth sense’ so to speak.”

Someone nearby screams. We all jolt in the perceived direction on guard for anything and wait for the assailant. The noise continues in its own area away from us, but still drags on as a threat.

Zaru suddenly murmurs something to himself, “Haru.” He bursts forth past the rest of us as he charges to the sound.

Dad, Kaif, and I follow behind him without hesitation.

After turning a corner, we spot Haru up in a dead tree that’s been sprouting from the wooden floor as she beats away at a smaller shadow thing like the one we encountered earlier.

Zaru makes his way over to the scene and stops to pull out his dagger. I hear him curse under his breath as he remembers that he left his stuff at the other house.

The thing turns around to see Zaru and begins to snarl at him instead.

“Ightah*!” Father approaches with a hand raised to command a stop from the small creature. He stands over it to show authority.

The creature obeys and wonders off to somewhere else.

Zaru takes this opportunity to aid Haru in climbing down the tree. “Why are you here, what happened?”

Haru slides her rear end off of the last branch in her navy-blue kimono skirt and replies, “There were these weird people who came to take Oumi for this guy named ‘Lord Vensen.’ We tried to hold them off in a brawl, but then there was this flash and suddenly we find ourselves in this strange place!” Her hands raise upwards to the ceiling to emphasize the last part of her sentence.

Zaru tries to comprehend what she just relayed. “So, you were knocked-out, and they then they dragged you here?”

“Yeah,” Haru blurts out, inconsiderate of the area in which we currently stand.

We all shush her spontaneously in fear of attracting more monsters.

Zaru brings his voice back down as he inquires some more, “So where are the others?”

His littler sister shrugs her shoulders. “We got separated soon after we found ourselves here.”

“Visitors!” A ghostly pale face hidden in long and messy blue hair pops out from behind Haru in the darkness and scares the hell out of us.

Zaru reacts by quickly pulling in his sister and keeping her behind him.

The strange and short man, despite his seemingly young age, walks into the light coming from above the tree with a hunched back. Light blue ropes of his thick and matted hair drape over his obverse to hide the stitches that cover his face. In a scratchy and dry voice, he breaks the awkward silence that he left us in, “It gets lonely in here sometimes. I’m glad that someone came over, even if it’s only for a few moments.” Some banging on some sort of metal echoes in the distance and catches his attention momentarily. His brows bend in anger as he fixates on the noise. He raises them back up into a friendly pose on his face and continuing with his greeting, “We must hurry to my chambers, if you wish to stay long.”

--------------------------

We now reside in a nice little hiding place somewhere in the basement of this large apartment. With no one in our group that has the power to transport into different dimensions like Uncle, the best thing for us to do now is hide and wait for an opportunity. I also think Zaru is looking a little exhausted from his lack of sleep and all the stress he’s endured so far.

“You should be safe here, so long as we all remain quiet.” The scruffy man shuffles his bare feet over to a boiling pot of water. “Forgive my abrupt entry earlier, as I’ve mentioned, it’s been a while since I’ve met someone else who isn’t so crazy.”

“No need to apologize,” Father takes the role of leader for our group with his tropes of speaking. “We appreciate your hospitality.”

A stale smile breaks through on the man’s stone face as he stirs the bubbling water with a stick. “My name’s Zenox, by the way.” He stops his cooking for the moment to stare at the ceiling in thought. “I think-“ back to his little pot, “It’s been a while.”

“We’ll go with Zenox for now.” Father grins with a good heart. “For the sake of knowing each other, I’m Sommi, and this is my daughter, Vila.” His hand kindly touches my back to have me step forth.

The other three people of our group politely bow and give Zenox-kan their names.

Dad takes a step further with the man’s hospitality. “I don’t mean to have us intrude on your dwelling place; but is it alright if we rest here for a little bit?”

“Oh please, guests are always nice to have!” Zenox-kan manages to keep his voice in a low tone while also putting it in a joyous inclination. He turns away from his pot above his little fire and pulls out multiple blankets from a pile in a corner of the space. “I don’t have much, but please do what you can to feel comfortable.”

“You don’t need to use up your resources for us, we just need rest.” Father takes a blanket from him.

Haru and I immediately hug each other with excitement to sleep next to each other again like the pals we are. The men can deal with their own problems.

------------------------------

Not surprisingly, I find it hard to sleep-what with all that has been happening lately. Haru doesn’t seem to be resting either as we both look at each other with boredom from the safety of the fleece.

She sits herself up from the blanket and starts to roam the area of the basement.

I get up as well to make sure she doesn’t get herself into trouble again.

We both sneak our way around the cold and solid walls in hopes of not disturbing anything or anyone. Kaif tip-toes his way over to us with the obverse of hope for adventure. So, the three of us are now scoping the grounds to see what the heck this place is about, but not straying too far away from the others, of course.

The area is so dark, though, I don’t think we’ll see much away from the fire that Zenox-kan has for his beloved pot of water. I wonder where he gets all of that wood and burning materials to keep it going?

I try squinting my eyes to see further into the night, but nothing comes up other than more hallway from this boxed area. Don’t they have light bulbs in here? Being the two brave imps, Haru and I adventure further into the darkness to see anything.

Kaif becomes worried and tries to convince us to stop our action. “What are you two doing?” The soft breath of his whisper smells of fear. “We still don’t know what’s out there.”

A clever idea pops into my head and I run back to the main spot of where the fire illuminates the room. I delicately look around to see what I can use for my plan without disturbing too much: A handful of decently long yarn (enough to wonder closely to the fire) and a lit candle stick that I grabbed from an opened box nearby before sticking it in the fire. “This should do,” I whisper back while showing them the objects I have obtained.

Haru’s face brightens to the enlightenment of my idea.

Without another word, Kaif stays at the outer edges of the light holding one end of the string. Haru holds the other end extending a few feet with another piece of yarn in her other hand and I hold the other end of that long one while wielding my small torch to see what else is out there.

I know, it’s probably immature of us to be finding our way around the safety zone just out of curiosity, but it’s not like we can sit here either and chat. It would be rude to wake up the others with our talking.

My little torch barely reveals anything, but at least I have some way of seeing what’s around in the deeper part of the basement. I motion the candle left to right to get the better scope of what I can see. Nothing but a hallway with walls boxing the place is before us to the great unknown as I sway the little light back and forth. In the dimness in front of me, I suddenly see a familiar face looking straight at me.

“Hello Princess.”

I scream as an immediate reaction to danger and drop the candle. I try turning to run in the other direction, but Roukuu snatches my wrist and pulls me in. “Let me go!” I shout as I thrust my shin between his knees as hard as I can.

Roukuu bends over with a grunt and releases me.

I take this chance to run back to the group with Haru’s hand in mine and find everyone wide awake. My bare feet quickly take me to the back side of Zaru and Father.

“Come now Princess.” Roukuu’s boots clamp onto the rotting wood beneath us as he projects his reasoning, “You should be back in the castle now. Father will be waiting for you.” His daunting tall figure approaches the yellow glow from the fire and causes us all to step back in fear from his intimidating eyes. “All the pieces have to be put back to where they belong.”

Kaif takes it the worse as he refuses to stare at Roukuu in any way. His entire body cringes into a ball with his legs close to his chest as he’s consumed by his own fear.

Roukuu scoffs with good intentions. “Calm down, I didn’t come here to hurt anyone, I just want to take everyone home while I’m on my break.”

No one’s buying your crap, Pal.

“I can’t keep the others wai-“ A squishy crack pops from behind him. His eyes widen with obscure surprise and he tumbles over to reveal a woman standing behind him with a metal pipe in her hands.

Her built frame stands over the baffled body of Roukuu with her sleek legs that are exposed from her extremely short pants. Her lean arms buldge from her torn up red sleeves that are supposed to cover them while her long blue hair hangs wildly over her deadly pale face. The blue hair imitates the ocean as it poofs out with its matted thickness and longevity yet remains contained by a tie. She glares at us with her glassy red eyes that are blazing with determination. “Run!”

Sommi takes the next action and heads towards the battlefield to help fend off Roukuu.

Zaru snatches my wrist and bolts past the heat and into the hallway.

I look back to see Kaif and Haru behind us, but Zenox cowards in a corner and shrinks away into the distance as we make our escape further into the abyss.

“Get them!” Roukuu’s voice carries through the walls to us.

Zaru comes to a halt and faces the numerous red eyes as the holins march their way closer to us like the vermin they are with their noises of cackling to our despair.

The woman turns to our predicament as Father keeps Roukuu busy and raises her hand above her head. As she swings it down towards the floor, a word passes her lips for a spell, “Kahath*!” With this motion, the holins dissipate into smoke and the particles crash into the walls to make a path for us. Her hand swings towards Roukuu and another word of power escapes from her tongue, “Shruul*.” From her hand, a breeze of some substance rushes out and locks Roukuu into a large crystal.

“Damn it Ari!” Roukuu shouts from his stale position in the thick ice.

The woman runs off towards us and takes control of the situation. “I told you guys to run!” She snatches Sommi’s hand and makes us all run for our lives like a great shockwave.

Not really caring for exactly where we’re heading, we try our best to keep up with this strange and powerful woman as she leads us through the darkness with her increasing pace. Eventually, she brings us to a much larger room with a strange crystal shinning in the middle on a pedestal.

Caru and Pick step into the light of the crystal. Haru and I embrace the lost sister who is now found and gather close as one group again.

I strain from the hugging slightly to stare at Caru with a thought in mind. “Where’s Oumi and Muei?”

“The crazy woman with blue hair said that they’re not here.”

“And you believe her?” Haru speculates against this woman who has saved us from my denounced uncle not too long ago.

“Well,” Caru spells out her words carefully, “There’s really not much in arguing with her.”

“This is it.” The woman’s bated breath slips out as she marvels over the fine object. Still holding onto my father, she looks to him with a crazed look in her red eyes and speaks with a maniacal tone, “You’re gonna help me get back and clean up this fucking mess.”

Father tries to maintain his cool and replies to her calmly as he slowly leans away from her, “Okay; but can I have my hand back please?”

She immediately lets go without pulling her insane gaze from him. “Take us out of here.”

“What?”

“Take us to your home planet or whatever, just anywhere that’s not here!” Her voice comes out sporadically with intense energy as she gives away her excitement and joy.

“Alright, whatever fixes this problem.” Father steps closer to the orb and spreads his hands above it to focus his energy. “Gather around the heart everyone.”

Is that what the crystal is?

We do as he says and form a circle around the thing.

The vigor around the object grows in intensity and forces the house around us to be eaten away by the darkness one particle at a time. Behind the curtain of this abyss emerges the structure of an open forest as we find ourselves in a setting that’s homier in the woods than that gloomy place. The warm rain pours on us with no consideration of who it hits and soaks us in victory.

We must be back in Aishy now.

----------------------------------------------

Ightah- This word is used to command an immediate impediment of someone’s actions. It can translate to something like, “Stop,” “Enough,” or “Obey.” This is another word from the same language as “Khri.” To pronounce this word, one makes a slightly harsh ‘h’ in the back of the throat when approaching the ‘gh’ after the short ‘i’ and then gives as spelled ‘tah.’

Kahath- Pronounced as spelled, this word comes from the same dialect of “Khri” and refers to decimating or any form of dissolving.

Shruul- Coming from the same tongue as “Kahath,” this word means to freeze or be frozen (referring to the object of which ones desires to freeze).